jacobvandy wrote on Sep 25, 2011, 19:22:Counterstrike, the most popular online FPS PC game ever, since its release and still to this day... was a mod, freely made and downloadable for free. Sure valve hired some of the CS guys to work on the later CS stuff, but it came from unpaid VOLUNTEERS.

The point you missed was that Valve do not have volunteers making games. They may have bought up mods produced by people that originally worked for free, yet as soon as they went to work for Valve they were paid. So Valve actually gave money to people that weren't getting any before; not that it was altruistic.